“Second Brother, don’t tell Big Brother about what happened today. He’ll worry.” Lian Xiaozhu lowered her head, nervously twisting the corner of her clothes.
Lian Qiguang Lian Qiguang looked down at Lian Xiaozhu from above, lips pressed together in silence.
“Second Brother…”
“I’ll save you,” Lian Qiguang said expressionlessly.
His current wood-element ability level could only temporarily suppress the corrosion around her heart and the failure of her internal organs, but it couldn’t truly eliminate it. Inside his space, there had once been a spring with healing and purification properties. But after the space sealed itself, it had disappeared.
He didn’t know if it would ever appear again.
But whether it returned or not, he would never place all his hope on that spring alone.
He would work to raise his ability level. As long as his power returned to level fifty, and with the crystal cores inside his space, he was ninety percent certain he could cure this pig.
“Mm!” Lian Xiaozhu lifted her face and broke into a bright smile. “I believe in you, Second Brother!”
Lian Qiguang stared at her foolish grin without expression, then said flatly, “What you saw in the infirmary—keep it secret.”
“Mm.” She nodded hard. “I won’t tell anyone.”
“Kumu! It’s getting dark. Time to head back to the academy!” Mi Xiaobao Mi Xiaobao waved from where he stood and shouted.
Lian Qiguang glanced at Mi Xiaobao, then looked at Lian Xiaozhu and slowly extended his hand.
A seed crushed in his palm.
A tiny sprout unfurled, rapidly growing before the naked eye.
“What flower is this? It’s so pretty.” Lian Xiaozhu stared wide-eyed at the flower branch in his hand.
Lian Qiguang withdrew his hand, shrinking the rose in his palm to about five centimeters, then placed it into Lian Xiaozhu’s pocket.
After that, he took out another seed, something like a pea, crushed it in his hand, and casually tossed it toward Chu Xi Chu Xi, who was standing far away.
“Eh?”
Flustered, Chu Xi barely caught the pea and looked lost.
“Watch this pig.”
After tossing out those words expressionlessly, Lian Qiguang turned and left.
“Yes… yes!” Realizing exactly who Lian Qiguang meant by “pig,” Chu Xi straightened nervously and gave an awkward military salute. “I’ll protect Xiaoxiao.”
Following Mi Xiaobao and Feng Qingyang Feng Qingyang back to the academy, Lian Qiguang remained silent the entire way.
Mi Xiaobao and Feng Qingyang assumed he was still troubled by Lian Xiaozhu’s condition, so neither of them made noise, quietly following beside him.
Back in the dormitory, Lian Qiguang responded to Mi Xiaobao’s goodnight with silence and returned expressionlessly to his room.
The moment the door shut behind him, the silent Lian Qiguang suddenly turned pale.
His body swayed.
He reached out and braced himself against the wall, barely supporting his weakened body.
Bright red blood dripped from the corner of his lips onto the floor, one drop at a time.
Messy strands of hair fell over half his face, hiding his expression and making his pain impossible to see.
Silence spread through the darkness.
No one knew how long passed before Lian Qiguang slowly raised his head, expressionless as he wiped away the blood from his lips.
Then he turned and returned to his bed, collapsing weakly onto it.
Wind blew in from the window, brushing the hair away from his face and revealing dark, lifeless eyes.
His pale face showed no sign of distress despite the pain ravaging his body.
Only in the deepest part of his eyes did a trace of exhaustion flicker.
Lian Qiguang slowly closed his eyes and drifted into sleep.
That night, he dreamed again.
Collapsed city walls.
Millions of rotting corpses reeking of decay surged through the breach like a black tide.
He stood atop the crumbling wall, expressionless, watching prey flee in terror.
Screams echoed everywhere.
The corpses hunted mercilessly through the crowd.
It was hell on earth.
His eyes remained cold.
Suddenly, Lian Qiguang’s gaze stopped on a young man.
The young man wore filthy coarse linen clothes.
Blood had soaked through his clothes, darkening to black.
His clothing was torn to shreds, exposing his thin body.
At that moment, the young man stood before a collapsed building, expressionlessly staring at a man pinned beneath the rubble from the waist down.
The fleeing humans, the slaughtering zombies—
to the young man, everything had become background noise.
In his eyes, only that man existed.
“Save… save me…”
The man stretched out one hand toward the young man.
His eyes were filled with terror and despair.
The young man looked at that outstretched hand.
Still expressionless.
Still unmoving.
His gaze remained calm.
But buried in the deepest part of that calmness was exhaustion.
“Save me… save… me…”
The man’s mouth opened wide like a fish stranded on land, struggling desperately for breath.
The young man moved.
Slowly, he turned away.
And walked off.
One zombie lunged at the man.
Then two.
Then three.
The man’s shrill screams gradually weakened.
In the end, only the sickening sound of chewing remained.
The young man wandered numbly through the crowd.
His eyes passed over faces filled with terror, despair—
or rot.
He reached the foot of the city wall.
A zombie noticed him.
Slowly, it stood up, abandoning the mangled prey it had been feeding on.
Baring its teeth, sticky blood dripping from its mouth, it roared and lunged.
The young man watched the approaching zombie with numb eyes.
Then slowly closed his eyes.
In that instant, Lian Qiguang thought he saw something in those eyes—
relief.
And peace.
Just as the zombie threw itself onto the young man—
the city wall collapsed.
It buried both the zombie and the young man beneath the rubble.
Lian Qiguang woke with a start.
The pain inside his body had faded.
In its place remained endless weakness and exhaustion.
When he entered the classroom, Lian Qiguang leaned lazily against the back of his chair, eyes closed, regulating the wood-element ability inside his body.
But his mind replayed last night’s scene again and again.
Or rather—
it couldn’t be called a dream.
It was memory.
This wasn’t the first time.
He had never been someone who dwelled on the past, nor would he deliberately recall things he didn’t want to remember and drown in them.
Perhaps…
something was about to happen.
“Kumu! Kumu!!”
Mi Xiaobao rushed in frantically and stumbled, collapsing onto Lian Qiguang’s desk.
Lian Qiguang opened his eyes and looked at the sweating Mi Xiaobao without expression.
“Kumu! Something happened!” Mi Xiaobao stood upright, panic written all over his face. “Do you remember the historical memorial museum for Lord Darklight that we visited?”
“… ”
“It was robbed.”
Lian Qiguang’s eyes tightened.
A bad feeling spread through his chest.
“What was stolen?”
“It was—that painting. The huge one. They said it was a fake. The one with Lord Darklight and another person in it.”
As expected.
Lian Qiguang’s eyes darkened.
“It was stolen last night. Not only were none of the patrol robots alerted, even the surveillance systems didn’t capture anything. It was like it just disappeared.”
Nothing captured?
An invisibility ability?
That power wasn’t common, but it wasn’t unheard of either.
He once vaguely remembered overhearing the Little Crown Prince mention that Wolong Base Wolong Base had two people with this ability.
But because it had little combat value, they weren’t highly valued.
After all, in the apocalypse, zombies hunted by sound and scent—not sight.
Invisibility couldn’t fool those corpses.
“This even alarmed the people from District One. They’ve sent people here to investigate. The entire memorial museum is sealed off now. No one can enter or leave.”
Mi Xiaobao kept chattering in his ear.
But Lian Qiguang no longer heard anything.
His mind was filled with only one thing.
The painting had been stolen.
Even though that painting was genuine, at the end of the day it was just a painting.
It had no practical use.
So who?
Who would go to such lengths—
causing such a huge disturbance—
just to steal a painting?
Who was it?
And what exactly was he planning?